Devil May Cry V [XB1/PS4/PC]

No thread, for shame? I'll keep this quick as I'm not too far, and I'm sure there's others that have already spent way more time on this than me.

Currently reviewing brilliantly, and following the last few AAA releases from Capcom (Resi 7, Monster Hunter World, Resi 2), this is provoking a lot of folks to proclaim that they are back at their best.

The game so far follows a familiar DMC structure, with fairly short, linear missions, typically rounded out by boss battles, some story scenes, and then the opportunity to go and upgrade your gear with the red orbs you picked up along the way. Slightly less familiar is the way that different characters are used for certain missions along the way.

So far, Nero's been fairly traditional, with a sword and gun to work with, but with some zip-wire shennanigans and a brand new 'devil breaker' sub-weapon setup. These seem powerful but break if you're hit when you're using them, or alternatively you can use a powered-up attack that also breaks them, but otherwise there's no way to cycle through your stock of these, which somewhat disappointingly does reduce their combo potential (... ok, I expect to be proven massively wrong on this). On the other hand, V fights in a much less direct manner; relying on separate summoned monsters to do melee and distanced attacks respectively. I'm not getting on too great with him so far, as although you can do some cool stuff with him, it feels much less responsive than I would like. I've not made it far enough to even comment on what Dante plays like yet

Story-wise it's the same over-the-top nonsense as ever, and visually it looks and moves pretty great.

I've just hit the half way point myself. Most of my peers clocked it at the weekend but I had prior plans so I wasn't able to. Because I missed that initial weekend I think I'm just going to stick to doing it in chunks the rest of the week.

Firstly, this game looks beautiful. It may offer the best graphics I've seen in a video game to date. The whole cast look realistic and awesome.

My PC is running it at around 150fps most of the time maxed out, but at 1080p. Frame rate is set to variable though so it can swing quite wildly depending on the rendering scenario. All in all though, I'm super pleased with the level of performance I'm able to get out of my machine. To think I considered buying a console again for this?

So far I'm really not fond of V. Nero is playing sorta like he did in 4, though my memory may be hazy and I may not have upgraded his skills all the way in that game. Dante is feeling as good as ever for me, exactly as I remember from 3 and 4.

Half way in I will say that it isn't especially doing anything groundbreaking or new but it's doing its namesake justice. It feels like a game from a generation or two back, in the best way.

It's very nice to have DMC back and it be pretty on point, the game has a very self assured style about it like three had and it runs (PC) really well. It's a good looking game for the most part as well and the combat system feels solid. I've gotten along alright with V as well, I don't mind the set up of attacking whilst positioning V away from other surrounding threats.

On the flip side the game looks good but it feels like it's masquerading as AAA but is economical underneath. The repetition in surroundings is already starting to feel a little tiring and if I'm being honest, I enjoy Bayonetta's gameplay more by quite a large margin. The game isn't just PS2 reminiscent either, it's almost exactly PS2 era in design to the point where I feel it may go against hardcore fans wishes but the reboot DmC was also better than this in several regards. There's a good run left to the game to see how it unfolds as it goes but so far as nice as it is to have the old DMC back it does feel like exactly that... nice but old.